Description

In 2017, a small crew gathered in a windowless Pentagon room to put AI at the heart of how America makes war. Led by Drew Cukor, an unyielding Marine Corps colonel driven by the deaths of US troops and the prospect of war with an AI-equipped China, the Project Maven team raced to send AI into combat, igniting controversy and forever changing the US military.

Summoning the mayhem of a tech startup, the Maven team wrestled Pentagon bureaucrats and each other. They enlisted an initially reluctant Silicon Valley, supercharged the growth of Palantir, and sent algorithms made by Amazon, Microsoft and others into hot wars. Maven fielded technology to identify targets at speed and scale, developed AI-infused command systems, and learned where AI fails.

The prospect of machines making independent decisions about life and death alarmed members of the US military across all ranks and the project sparked a revolt amongst thousands of tech workers at Google. Yet today, Maven’s AI-enabled systems operate in every branch of the US military and its lessons are folded into developing autonomous technology set to be on the front lines of future war.

Project Maven and its legacy sit at the intersection of colliding trends: America’s insecurity about declining global power, the technological revolution driving AI into every aspect of society, the dominance of Big Tech, all-encompassing surveillance, and the ambitions of China’s growing military. As the second Trump administration pours money into military AI and autonomy while the UN Secretary-General clamours for a ban on killer robots, this book investigates whether AI will improve accuracy and save lives or if a fundamentally unreliable black-box technology will unleash mistakes and atrocities at scale.

Drawing on more than 200 interviews with insiders and opponents, this compelling narrative tells the definitive story of how AI warfare, once the stuff of apocalyptic science fiction, has become a reality.

Publisher Review

“Meticulously researched and engagingly narrated, Project Maven traces the secret history of the Pentagon’s effort to apply AI to war, from Afghanistan to the Taiwan Straits. Essential reading.” — Chris Miller, author of Chip War “Anyone worried about AI systems making life-or-death decisions on the battlefield will be captivated and dismayed by Katrina Manson’s urgent and deeply reported book.” — Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound “Katrina Manson sorts hype from reality in chilling and up-to-the-minute history of algorithms that are starting to go to war-long before they have been fully debugged.” — Gary Marcus, author of Taming Silicon Valley “An urgent expose on the perils and promise of algorithmic warfare. With journalistic flair and insider access, Katrina Manson reveals how the Pentagon is racing to ‘enable lethality’ at machine speed.” — Patrick McGee, author of Apple in China “A secrecy-busting account of America’s development of AI in intelligence and weapons systems. Project Maven is a movie trailer of the future of warfare.” — Lionel Barber, former editor of the Financial Times and author of Gambling Man “Katrina Manson has achieved a rare feat: explaining a potentially world-changing technology through a gripping, page-turning narrative. From the battlefields of Afghanistan to the AI labs of Silicon Valley, Project Maven fires on all cylinders.” — Matthew Campbell, co-author of Dead in the Water “A gripping story of the most important secret military project of the twenty-first century. A band of revolutionaries smashed through the Pentagon bureaucracy to usher in a new age of AI warfare. An important book for understanding the future of war.” — Paul Scharre, author of Army of None “A revelatory examination of the future of war. Project Maven is meticulously reported yet reads like a thriller. If you want to understand the military applications of AI, read this book.” — Elliot Ackerman, author of Sheepdogs